IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/usm/journl/aamjaf01201_129-151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial Information Quality and Investment Efficiency: Evidence from Malaysia

Author

Listed:
  • Seyed Sajad Ebrahimi Rad

    (School of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Management Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Zaini Embong

    (School of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Management Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Norman Mohd-Saleh

    (School of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Management Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

  • Romlah Jaffar

    (School of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Management Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia)

Abstract

This study aims to empirically examine the association between financial information quality and investment efficiency among firms in Malaysia. Sample of this study consists of 558 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia from the year of 2001 until 2011. The investment efficiency is measured based on firms’ deviations from the expected investment level. The financial information quality is measured based on four different measurement schemes. The results provide support that financial information quality is significantly positively related to investment efficiency. The inclusion of several firm level control variables and use of alternative models to measure investment efficiency provides consistent findings. The results of this study provide further understanding and empirical evidence relevant to quality of financial information and investment efficiency. As most of the extant studies on this association have been done on data from the US and advanced countries, this study fills the gap in literature by investigating the impact of financial information quality on investment efficiency in an emerging market. Although emerging markets make up the vast majority of economic activity around the world, they have received limited attention in academic research. Findings of this study could be of interest to the international organisations such as World Bank whose missions are to aid countries with developing and transitional economy, and improve living conditions of their citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Seyed Sajad Ebrahimi Rad & Zaini Embong & Norman Mohd-Saleh & Romlah Jaffar, 2016. "Financial Information Quality and Investment Efficiency: Evidence from Malaysia," Asian Academy of Management Journal of Accounting and Finance (AAMJAF), Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, vol. 12(1), pages 129-151.
    • Handle: RePEc:usm:journl:aamjaf01201_129-151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.usm.my/journal/aamjaf/vol%2012-1-2016/aamjaf120116_06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June.
    3. Biddle, Gary C. & Hilary, Gilles & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2009. "How does financial reporting quality relate to investment efficiency?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2-3), pages 112-131, December.
    4. Muniandy, Balachandran & Ali, Muhammad Jahangir, 2012. "Development of financial reporting environment in Malaysia," Research in Accounting Regulation, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 115-125.
    5. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    6. Qingyuan Li & Tielin Wang, 2010. "Financial reporting quality and corporate investment efficiency: Chinese experience," Nankai Business Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 1(2), pages 197-213, June.
    7. Dechow, Patricia & Ge, Weili & Schrand, Catherine, 2010. "Understanding earnings quality: A review of the proxies, their determinants and their consequences," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 344-401, December.
    8. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    9. Ray Ball & Lakshmanan Shivakumar, 2006. "The Role of Accruals in Asymmetrically Timely Gain and Loss Recognition," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 207-242, May.
    10. Leuz, C & Verrecchia, RE, 2000. "The economic consequences of increased disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38, pages 91-124.
    11. Barth, Mary E. & Beaver, William H. & Landsman, Wayne R., 2001. "The relevance of the value relevance literature for financial accounting standard setting: another view," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 77-104, September.
    12. Jeff P. Boone & Inder K. Khurana & K.K. Raman, 2012. "Audit Market Concentration and Auditor Tolerance for Earnings Management," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(4), pages 1171-1203, December.
    13. Qingyuan Li & Tielin Wang, 2010. "Financial reporting quality and corporate investment efficiency: Chinese experience," Nankai Business Review International, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 1(2), pages 197-213, June.
    14. Kothari, S.P. & Leone, Andrew J. & Wasley, Charles E., 2005. "Performance matched discretionary accrual measures," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 163-197, February.
    15. Lambert, Richard A., 2001. "Contracting theory and accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 3-87, December.
    16. David Aboody & John Hughes & Jing Liu, 2002. "Measuring Value Relevance in a (Possibly) Inefficient Market," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 965-986, September.
    17. Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2006. "International Differences in the Cost of Equity Capital: Do Legal Institutions and Securities Regulation Matter?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 485-531, June.
    18. Ole‐Kristian Hope & Wayne B. Thomas, 2008. "Managerial Empire Building and Firm Disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 591-626, June.
    19. Gilles Hilary & Sudipto Dasgupta & Xing Chang, 2009. "The Effect of Auditor Quality on Financing Decisions," Post-Print hal-00481935, HAL.
    20. Gilles Hilary & Gary C. Biddle, 2006. "Accounting Quality and Firm-Level Capital Investment," Post-Print hal-00481720, HAL.
    21. R. Cont, 2001. "Empirical properties of asset returns: stylized facts and statistical issues," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(2), pages 223-236.
    22. Richard Lambert & Christian Leuz & Robert E. Verrecchia, 2007. "Accounting Information, Disclosure, and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 385-420, May.
    23. Holmstrom, Bengt & Tirole, Jean, 1993. "Market Liquidity and Performance Monitoring," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 678-709, August.
    24. Stijn Claessens & Joseph P. H. Fan, 2002. "Corporate Governance in Asia: A Survey," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 3(2), pages 71-103, June.
    25. Ball, Ray & Robin, Ashok & Wu, Joanna Shuang, 2003. "Incentives versus standards: properties of accounting income in four East Asian countries," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1-3), pages 235-270, December.
    26. Gao, Lei & Kling, Gerhard, 2008. "Corporate governance and tunneling: Empirical evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 591-605, November.
    27. Kanodia, C & Lee, DH, 1998. "Investment and disclosure: The disciplinary role of periodic performance reports," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 33-55.
    28. Eberly, Janice C., 1997. "International evidence on investment and fundamentals," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1055-1078, June.
    29. Claessens, Stijn & Djankov, Simeon & Lang, Larry H. P., 2000. "The separation of ownership and control in East Asian Corporations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1-2), pages 81-112.
    30. Joanne Horton & George Serafeim & Ioanna Serafeim, 2013. "Does Mandatory IFRS Adoption Improve the Information Environment?," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(1), pages 388-423, March.
    31. Anthony, Joseph H. & Ramesh, K., 1992. "Association between accounting performance measures and stock prices : A test of the life cycle hypothesis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2-3), pages 203-227, August.
    32. Zhaoyang Gu, 2007. "Across‐sample Incomparability of R2s and Additional Evidence on Value Relevance Changes Over Time," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(7‐8), pages 1073-1098, September.
    33. Bushman, Robert M. & Smith, Abbie J., 2001. "Financial accounting information and corporate governance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 237-333, December.
    34. Jeff Boone & Inder K. Khurana & K. K. Raman, 2012. "Audit Market Concentration and Auditor Tolerance for Earnings Management," Working Papers 0014, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elya Nabila Abdul Bahri & Abu Hassan Shaari Md Nor & Nor Hakimah Haji Mohd Nor, 2018. "The Role of Financial Development on Foreign Direct Investment in ASEAN-5 Countries: Panel Cointegration with Cross-Sectional Dependency Analysis," Asian Academy of Management Journal of Accounting and Finance (AAMJAF), Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, vol. 14(1), pages 1-23.
    2. Yasean A. Tahat & Ahmed H. Ahmed & David Power, 2022. "Earnings quality and investment efficiency: the role of the institutional settings," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1277-1306, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Houcine, Asma, 2017. "The effect of financial reporting quality on corporate investment efficiency: Evidence from the Tunisian stock market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 321-337.
    2. Biddle, Gary C. & Hilary, Gilles & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2009. "How does financial reporting quality relate to investment efficiency?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2-3), pages 112-131, December.
    3. Roychowdhury, Sugata & Shroff, Nemit & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2019. "The effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate investment: A review," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2).
    4. Chan-Jane Lin & Tawei Wang & Chao-Jung Pan, 2016. "Financial reporting quality and investment decisions for family firms," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 499-532, June.
    5. Hans B. Christensen & Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2021. "Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1176-1248, September.
    6. Shen, Chung-Hua & Luo, Fuyan & Huang, Dengshi, 2015. "Analysis of earnings management influence on the investment efficiency of listed Chinese companies," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 60-78.
    7. Hanif Putra Ardianto & Iman Harymawan & Yuanita Intan Paramitasari & Mohammad Nasih, 2020. "Financial Reporting Quality and Investment Efficiency: Evidence from Indonesian Stock Market," Economics and Finance in Indonesia, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Indonesia, vol. 66, pages 112-122, Desember.
    8. De George, Emmanuel T. & Li, Xi & Shivakumar, Lakshmanan, 2016. "A review of the IFRS adoption literature," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67599, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Emmanuel T. De George & Xi Li & Lakshmanan Shivakumar, 2016. "A review of the IFRS adoption literature," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 898-1004, September.
    10. Asiri, Mohammed & Al-Hadi, Ahmed & Taylor, Grantley & Duong, Lien, 2020. "Is corporate tax avoidance associated with investment efficiency?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    11. Cao, Zhangfan & Rees, William & Zhang, Zhifang, 2023. "The effect of real earnings smoothing on corporate labour investment," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(6).
    12. Hsu, Audrey Wen-hsin & Liu, Sophia Hsin-Tsai, 2016. "Organizational structure, agency costs, and accrual quality," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 35-60.
    13. Ru Gao & Baljit K. Sidhu, 2018. "The Impact of Mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards Adoption on Investment Efficiency: Standards, Enforcement, and Reporting Incentives," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 54(3), pages 277-318, September.
    14. Clarkson, Peter & Gao, Ru & Herbohn, Kathleen, 2020. "The relationship between a firm’s information environment and its cash holding decision," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    15. Schleicher, Thomas & Tahoun, Ahmed & Walker, Martin, 2010. "IFRS adoption in Europe and investment-cash flow sensitivity: Outsider versus insider economies," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 143-168, June.
    16. Cutillas Gomariz, Mª Fuensanta & Sánchez Ballesta, Juan Pedro, 2014. "Financial reporting quality, debt maturity and investment efficiency," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 494-506.
    17. Karthik Balakrishnan & John E. Core & Rodrigo S. Verdi, 2014. "The Relation Between Reporting Quality and Financing and Investment: Evidence from Changes in Financing Capacity," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 1-36, March.
    18. Jaehong Lee & Eunsoo Kim, 2020. "The Influence of Corporate Environmental Responsibility on Overinvestment Behavior: Evidence from South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-20, March.
    19. Cheng, Mei & Dhaliwal, Dan & Zhang, Yuan, 2013. "Does investment efficiency improve after the disclosure of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 1-18.
    20. Chandra Kanodia & Haresh Sapra, 2016. "A Real Effects Perspective to Accounting Measurement and Disclosure: Implications and Insights for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 623-676, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usm:journl:aamjaf01201_129-151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Division, Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aammmea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.